Tag: speech

I’ve been watching Boston Legal recently. In it there’s a character called Alan Shore who uses his passionate, mellifluous voice to devastating effect in courtroom closing arguments. In an episode I just watched he argues that the U.S. government should ‘hire the geniuses’, rather than public sector contractor cronies. It’s not actually his best closing (his ‘Free Religion’ one is amazing), but later, talking to his buddy Denny Crane, he says it a lot more succinctly: Hire the geniuses, not the…

In September 1939 Hitler invaded Poland. With thousands of tanks and planes, the invasion was short and victory was absolute. Two days later, Hitler’s steady advancement across European borders was finally curtailed by the Allied declaration of war. It would be the last, world-encompassing dying breath of an empire that once spanned a quarter of the world, an empire that had already sustained massive social and military erosion since the First World War. “I felt as if I were walking…

I was never a huge fan of custard as a child. I still don’t like it an awful lot; probably because my only real run-ins with it were at school where we were treated to lovely made-from-mass-catering-quality ‘just add water’ custard power. It seems like I am a day or two late on the reporting of this gem, but it turns out that Richard Branson, the Virgin Atlantic/Galactic/Radio/Music/Hot Air Ballooning owner/CEO may have received the greatest letter of complaint of…